But the swordsman is really a semi retired computer scientist of the first rank, the sword is tipped with a wormhole a la Morgaine's Changeling, and the talking cat is really the avatar of a planet-sized AI ...

'When he came up to Cambridge he had a girlfriend from school, and then there were a couple of romances,' she recalls, adding with a laugh that he was no 'swordsman' as a student, 'much as he might like us to think he was.'